George Bernard Shaw World Literature Analysis - Essay

George Bernard Shaw World Literature Analysis

Shaw became a playwright who knew the conventional tricks of the theater but was determined to use drama as a means of shaking audiences out of their complacencies, hypocrisies, and thoughtless acquiescence to all kinds of social evil. In The Quintessence of Ibsenism, Shaw presented the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen as a realistic and reforming playwright who addressed problems of modern life and introduced genuine discussion in his dialogue, qualities that Shaw admired and emulated. Shaw was not drawn to Ibsen’s more profound and symbolic plays but valued instead those that attacked middle-class conventionality and hypocrisy. In the wake of Ibsen, Shaw abandoned the Victorian idolization of William Shakespeare and opened...